


shine a little brighter

by metonymy



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Sad sad sad, trying to reconcile canon to itself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:51:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/pseuds/metonymy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy seemed dimmed, quieter, the spark he so loved in her flickering a little lower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shine a little brighter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meredyd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meredyd/gifts).



> Written for Mer off a Tumblr ficlet request: Amy + Eleven, “I don’t shine if you don’t shine”
> 
> Set sometime before “The Rebel Flesh.” Trying to make characterization changes from S5 to S6 make sense.

At first he thought it was because she was married. Married people became boring, didn’t they? They settled down in boring little towns like boring Upper Leadworth or boring flats in London and only bothered about takeaways and taking turns with the washing up and never thought about things like popping off for a quick jaunt to Alpha Centauri. But no, that didn’t make sense. He’d met lots of interesting people who were married. Some of them multiple times. And yet Amy seemed dimmed, quieter, the spark he so loved in her flickering a little lower.

Eventually he realized that it wasn’t that the spark was flickering. It was entirely different, like in some way the Amelia Pond he’d met twice before stealing away had been another girl - and, in fact, she had. When time had rewound itself and she’d lived her life again, she’d not been a child living alone in a too-big house with an imaginary friend who was real. She’d grown up with parents, with love and security and protection. She’d grown up without needing to be quite as brave or quite as reckless, with more to lose and more to fear losing. He had sealed up the crack in her wall - but he’d also sealed her off from part of herself. Remembering the life she’d lived the first time round, the life where he stole her away on the night before her wedding and Rory died underground and they met vampires and Van Gogh and stood under Stonehenge on a frosty night… well, it could never measure up to living all that, the visceral thrill of it. It had to be that, didn’t it? Living a different life, only remembering what happened? Memories were all well and good but were they the same on a molecular level?

Or was it something else? What was he missing?


End file.
